Dev::Blog

I hate my office chair, but I realized it didn’t make a lot of sense to complain about something that I chose to sit my butt down on every day, so I decided to make a change. Of course, I’m too lazy to actually go buy (or order online) a new chair, so I just picked from the available other options here in the office and have now spent an entire day using an inflatable exercise ball for a chair.

My back hurts.

It’ll be interesting to see if the pain progresses over the next few days (indicating that my on-the-ball posture sucks) or if it gets better (indicating that I’m actually working some core muscles that I didn’t know existed). Most of the pain (a dull ache, to be fair) is in the middle of my back, and part of that could be because I tend to be reaching forward more - I have to roll myself closer to the desk since the ball doesn’t slide like a chair would.

I remember talking to someone about this a year or two ago - she said she thought it would help her posture, but after a day or two, she learned to slouch on a ball effectively. As a champion sloucher, I’m not worried about my posture one way or another, but I’ve got to say - an inflatable seat is way comfy.

One thing’s for sure though - I probably shouldn’t have started this trial while hopped up on Nyquil.

Or I should have brought a helmet.

Technorati Tags: exercise ball, office chairs

As it looks less and less likely that we’ll be seeing the Apple Phone here in Canada anytime soon, I’ve rebuilt my lust for the Nokia E61. On the bright side, Apple hype might even drive prices down on eBay.

Ange is cleaning out clutter like mad at Casa Del Thrust, which has oddly resulted in me having more things to go through, since she’s found boxes of long-forgotten stuff including an issue of Color Computer magazine from the early ’80s. The CoCo I was my first computer, and I’m tempted to get one to mess around with, but the fun would probably wear off in a day or so, and I’m not interested in something that I have to hook up to a TV (though it looks like you can get a VGA interface and a PC keyboard adapter for them now, so KVM isn’t out of the question.)

A more practical option would be to use an emulator. There’s an online one you can try, and I spent a few minutes last night trying out some of the downloadable ones (many haven’t graduated from DOS mode).

Now, going back to the E61 (remember how we started?), I think the award for coolest ever would be a CoCo emulator running on my phone. Hey, the thing already can run MAME, so why not?

Technorati Tags: E61, CoCo, emulators

This is more of a bookmark post. Whatever.

Lately, I’ve been liking the idea of small devices that can just plug into a network and do something. The something is less relevant at this point; it could be VOIP related, file serving, video related, webcammy, or the always popular class of “whatever,” but it doesn’t really matter, since we’re still in tech fetish mode at the moment.

I’ve heard lots of things about hacking the Linksys WRT54G, and I saw one running Asterix a while back. Too bad I gave my (semi-flaky) router away a few months back…

Ile sans Fil, Montreal’s version of Wireless Toronto, has a neat project called HAL - media content tied to local hostspots using a modified Linksys NSLU2.

I also just saw the eXcito Bubba this morning, which looks like a neat toy, but ships from Europe.

…And then, of course, there’s the whole mini-ATX range where you can make whatever you want, but at the moment (since this probably won’t go past theory phase anyway), I like the idea of repurposing existing stuff. Remember the hubub about running Linux on a Dreamcast?

I first started running Linux because I couldn’t afford to run a proper Windows box. It’s interesting that now that consumer electronics are so much cheaper (and I have an actual income), the drive to make things is weighted more to the “wouldn’t it be cool” side than the cost side, but we pretty much win either way.

Technorati Tags: Linux, Embedded Systems

I’ve been out of the consumer electronics loop for too long - I didn’t realize that high definition LCD TVs can be used as monitors.

As it is, I’m having a hard time stopping myself from buying an XBox 360 for the office (you know, to catch up with consumer electronics!) to hook up to my Dell monitors (the things have 4 input sources and I’m only using two of them. I hate waste). Now I need to keep the entire contents of my living room out of the office…

Technorati Tags: HDTV, monitors